Inexplicable (to me, at least) sleep problem

I've been having computer sleep problems, so yesterday, I rebooted, and set monitor and computer to go to sleep after one minute. When that worked, I then increased the sleep time for both one step at a time in the Power Options time choices.

I ended the day yesterday with both set for one hour. That worked so well that at 0445, SuperAntiSpyware woke the computer, ran the daily scheduled scan, and the computer went back to sleep. I woke the machine a while later, and set the time for both to two hours.

Without opening any other programs than the ones that were running yesterday, the computer failed to go to sleep after two hours. I then reset the time to one minute to run a quick test; after one minute, the monitor went to sleep, but the computer did not.

That last behavior is what I have been encountering for several days, forcing a reboot to get the computer to go to sleep as scheduled. Each time this has happened, I first test by setting the sleep interval to one minute; when that works, I reset the monitor to thirty minutes, the computer to two house. I then find, usually the same day, that the computer will again not go to sleep as scheduled.

I have neither any idea as to why this is taking place, nor any idea how I might find out what the cause is and fix it. Suggestions, ideas, incantations, chants, and/or other methodologies to ameliorate the problem accepted.

Hi,
Pretty weird stuff going on are you using a created power plan or a built in power plan and adjusting the sleep timer ?
Review this tutorial it might show all that's able to wake or prevent sleep,
Devices - See Devices that are able to Wake Up the Computer
Click Start and type in the search box,
msconfig
Click on the suggestion on top or hit the Enter key,
Go to the Startup section and take some screen shots for a complete list,
Go to the Services section and on the bottom left Check the box to Hide All Microsoft services,
Repeat the screen shots,
See the links above my signature on how to take and upload screen shots here,
Cheers.

I notice Gregrocker reccomended one sec and two secs for next action. This is good. I would even spread them out slightly further. When they are set to the same you run the risk of a race before they are executed. A race means one might not get executed.

Hi,
Did you get a list of devices from the tutorial ?
Cheers.

While I do find and agree that that is a long startup list, if it suddenly started happening last week that is a key point there. (although you really should disable some of them, a lot of them are unnecessary but it is your machine.)

Basic troubleshooting 101:

1.) Has any applications updated in the last week since when the issue began?

2.) Another thing that would be smart to do is find each program that is in your startup list and check the change log on there website and see what was changed. Another idea is too look into their forums and see if anyone is reporting a similar issue.

3.) If you did a system restore back to the time it was working and this solves the issue at hand, we then can look into what program is causing it.

4.) Did you get a new mouse/keyboard/hardware lately?

5.) Try and deselect an application from starting at boot in msconfig one at a time, and then see if a certain program is causing it.

6.) Please see this guide: Wake Source - Read Event Viewer Log to see what it reports is waking it.